


Shifting Sands

by themillersdaughtersmistress



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Multi, Temporary Character Death, but they're fine after like two paragraphs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-06 03:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11027973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themillersdaughtersmistress/pseuds/themillersdaughtersmistress
Summary: Max’s ship arrives with two hours to spare.





	Shifting Sands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mapped](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/gifts).



> This started as a response to @mapped's request for how Max and Anne's relationship changes with Read added into the equation, and the flashbacks (italics) are definitely that...as for the rest? Who knows. Thank you for the prompt, though, and I hope you enjoy it still! 
> 
> Reviews are always appreciated!

**~ 1720~**

Max’s ship arrives with two hours to spare.

It’s an hour before dawn; two hours before the scheduled hanging of the Dread Pirate Captain Jack Rackham. She’d pushed to sail through the past night since they were so close, and she was glad they did. Flanked by her ship’s captain and quartermaster, she ran through the jail. There wasn’t much she could think of to save Anne or Jack or Mark, but there was always the chance that he could be bribed, and she’d built up enough wealth to try.

The poor man fell out of his chair, nearly hitting his head on the edge of his desk, when she burst into his office. It was cramped and dark and she wanted to leave immediately, but stood taller instead, and made her case.

The man had the gall to laugh. “You truly think that I would risk the most important day of my life on the word of some—”

“I’d watch what you say next, sir,” her Captain, Ron Ethan, still chivalrously jumped to her defense at any insult that would be tossed her way.

The jailer huffed, calmly leaning back into his chair like he hadn’t fallen out of it just then. He stroked his chin, actually considering Max. “You’re willing to pay for them? You one of Jack’s girls?”

~*~

_Mark guffawed into Max’s bare shoulder when she heard. “He really…really asked that?” she puffed out between barks of laughter. Max rolled her eyes good-naturedly at Mark’s theatrics._

_“It is a reasonable assumption to make, ma chérie,” Max defended Dunn. She thought it as hilarious as Mark, honestly, but to see Mark so carefree even with them was a rare treat, and she wanted it to continue for as long as possible._

_“No it ain’t,” Anne closed the door behind herself, slowly walking over to the bed. In her right hand was the necks of two bottles of rum, and in the other a mug of juice. One bottle went to Max, and the mug went to Mark. One of the most adorable things about Mark was her inability to hold her liquor._

_“There’s more?” Mark demanded, grin nearly splitting her face. “Are you defending a former pirate’s honor?”_

_“I can’t believe it either,” Anne said, settling in on her other side. “And over something like this. Tell me, Mark Read,_ are _you Jack Rackham’s newest girl?”_

_Mark crinkled her nose. “I’m no one’s girl!”_

_Max turned towards her. “Oh?” She kissed Mark quickly. “Are you certain?”_

_Mark went red, but gave it playful consideration as Anne chuckled in the background. “We-ell…I think I could be persuaded for the right person.”_

~*~

“No, I am only an interested third party,” Max responded.

The jailer shrugged. “In any case, I can’t release Rackham. His girls, though, claim they got themselves knocked up by him, so you can keep ’em if you can promise you’ll keep them away from any other pirate captains that’ll drag them back on the account.”

Relief flooded Max, followed by a wave of guilt. The idea was undoubtedly Mark’s; she was the more conniving of the two of her pirates, and would have had this in the back of her mind even at their most fearsome and unopposed. It was how she’d survived, and Max thanked a God she no longer believed in that Mark had managed to survive long enough to reach them. But, Jack.

 _Their_ Jack.

This was something she would not be able to get him out of with her words—might not be able to get him out of at all. She thought of her options—what she brought with her to use, how what she did could affect Nassau, and what she could stand to sacrifice (and a part of her wailed at even thinking of Nassau in this moment, of the look on Anne’s face if she knew, of Mark and her need to try and mend things and how she would be unable to mend this if Max misstepped even once)—and sighed.

“I can,” she said, something cold curling around her stomach as she said it. The quartermaster, a man so like Jack in build and hair that the journey here had physically hurt at times, stepped around her and placed the sack of money they’d brought with them. Though his eyes were all but hidden by the cloth he wore over his face, her quartermaster’s eyes held a promise. The jailer shrugged and got get his keys.

She kept her eyes on the back of the jailer’s jacket as they were guided through the labyrinth of cells. It got colder the further they went down, the shouts of the inmates echoing through the halls, and Max wrapped her arms around herself.

They reached the very end of the stairs, and then walked to the three cells at the end of the hallway. Anne, dirty and coat torn but still with her hat (the hat Mark had plucked off of her head and jumped back into bed with right before their last voyage. “We still have another hour before we have to get up,” she’d whined. “We can stay with Max for that long, at least!”), immediately to her feet. Mark stayed down, curled into a ball, and Max felt a fresh bolt of fear go through her at how pale she looked. Jack, even when he looked as if he’d gotten the worst ass-kicking of the past decade, wore an expression of aloof interest on a nearly unrecognizable bloody face.

Anne’s smile slipped off her face once she saw their jailer with Max. Her expression melted into one of confusion. “You lot apparently still have a bit of luck left,” he said as he unlocked Anne’s cell. He moved on to Mark’s cell. The door swung open, but she barely moved. The jailer grinned maliciously, keys dangling from his pinky finger. “You and Read are being freed into her custody. Rackham will still hang at dawn.”

All hell broke loose. Anne jumped on to the jailer, heedless of her own injuries. Mark scrambled up and stumbled into them, apparent sickness gone or irrelevant in the place of Anne risking her life. Max was knocked to the ground almost immediately by Ethan. Her ears rung as she pushed herself up by her elbows, and could barely piece together what had apparently happened.

Her captain was restraining Anne, who was still pulling futilely against the hold he had her arms in. Mark had fallen to her knees, illness apparently refusing to be denied and her quartermaster was the only thing holding her up.

“I apologize,” Max said roughly, eyes straying to Mark, then Anne, and then between her quartermaster and the slumped form in Jack’s cell. Finally, her eyes returned to the jailer. “I anticipated leaving him here would be a struggle, but I did not anticipate this level of anguish. May we at least have his body, after, so that they might have closure?”

The jailer glared at her. “Fuck no!” he growled. “Those she-demons are lucky I’m an honorable man, and don’t lock all three of you in here!”

Max’s shoulders slumped. “They are,” she replied, refusing to look over at Anne’s no-doubt enraged expression. “And I thank you for being honorable. Captain, please take Bonny and Read back to the ship.”

~*~

_“Stop that,” Anne’s voice broke through the silence of the night, startling Max from the words she’d been tracing on Mark’s bare shoulder. The three of them were curled naked in Max’s bed, right before they were due to set sail._

_“Stop what?” Max asked._

_“What you’re doing, with your face,” Anne insisted. “You do that thinking frown thing, when you got something good and you’re waiting for something bad to happen. It ain’t gonna; not this time.”_

_“Are you certain?” Max asked. It wasn’t to be argumentative; merely because she wanted to see how far Anne would go with this._

_“’Course she’s not,” came a sleepy rumble in between them. Mark poked her head up. “All three of us could have heart attacks in the next hour, dying in here and ruinin’ Max’s good sheets. We don’t want that, but it could happen.”_

_Anne flicked Mark’s forehead. “The fuck’d you say that for?” she demanded._

_Mark shrugged. “I want undisturbed sleep before I have to be up early, and I figured airing out all our fears would make that happen sooner. Looks like I was wrong, though.”_

_Max immediately lay back and crossed her arms over her chest, trying to look innocent and nearly asleep. “Sorry, darling!” she said, trying for a contrite expression that cracked into a wide smile almost the moment it was on her face._

_Anne snorted. “No, you ain’t.” She rolled her eyes. “Can you at least trust us to look out for ourselves?”_

_“Yeah, trust us!” Mark added._

_Max sighed, and looked at both of them. The loves of her life. “Alright, as long as you promise me the same.”_

~*~

Anne didn’t speak to her for two days. She didn’t speak when Max finally made it back to the boat after them, after settling out a contract on paper with the jailer. She didn’t speak when her quartermaster had pulled down the cloth over his face to reveal that of Jack Rackham, switched in the mayhem Anne had managed to cause. (She did hug Jack, though. After punching him in the gut first.) She didn’t speak when she heard tail from the crew of how the quartermaster had been slowly dying of an incurable pox, and had jumped at Max’s offer to die on the sea as long as his family was taken care of.

Finally, once the sun had set on the second day, she came into Max’s cabin. Max straightened at her desk, but waited for Anne to speak first.

“That was fucking stupid,” Anne finally mumbled, crossing her arms over her chest. “Risking yourself like that.”

Max frowned. “You are not mad that I apparently left Jack to hang for his crimes, or for having a man hang in his place?”

Anne shrugged. “I was. Then I was mad about you dragging a whole crew after people stupid enough to get captured. Now I’m mad about this.”

“That…that makes very little sense,” Max responded.

“No, it don’t, but it’s how I feel.” Anne moved forward in the room, coming to stand in front of the desk. “I would thank you for it, if I was sure you’d never do something like that again.”

“Since you all can no longer be pirates unless you gain an entirely new crew and identity, I think the point is immaterial.”

“No it ain’t!” Anne shouted, and Max knew she’d hit the heart of the problem. “I don’t want you risking your ass for me!”

“I am ‘risking my ass’ every time I deny knowing anything about the pirate activity in the area!” Max shouted back. “And I would gladly risk it for someone who is the love of my life!”

“That ain’t—what?” Anne frowned, and Max realized what she said—what she hadn’t said before now. She’d told Anne how important she was, how she cared for her, and had whispered it in languages she’d known Anne couldn’t understand into the dead of night when Anne was sleeping.

“The love of my life,” Max repeated, stronger. “You and Mark are the loves of my life, and Jack is the closest thing to family—the family that family is supposed to be—that I have. I could not allow you all to hang if I could do something about it.”

Anne gaped at her, opening and closing her mouth, for a full minute. “You’re still stupid,” she finally said. A small smile was pulling at the edge of her mouth, though.

“That’s all you have to say in response?” Max demanded, but a smile was growing on her own face in response to Anne’s.

Anne jerkily nodded, unwinding her arms. “Yeah,” she said. “Come here.”

Max walked around the desk, grin fully in place, and kissed her.


End file.
